The missing submersible raises troubling questions for the adventure tourism industry

It’s been a troubling year for the adventure tourism industry, which offers high-risk travel to customers wealthy enough to afford it, including rocket rides into space, treks to lofty mountain summits, and voyages to the sea floor.

Seventeen people died in 2023 trying to summit Mount Everest in Nepal, and more have needed rescue. Now a massive search is underway in the North Atlantic for a submersible carrying four tourists and a crewmember on a trip to view the wreck of the Titanic.

Critics say this growing sector of the travel industry largely has avoided government oversight, despite a history of accidents and fatalities. For people paying to make trips with a guide or an adventure travel company, it’s often buyer beware.

« If you regulate, you’re going to kill the sense of adventure, so no regulation was brought, » said Alain Grenier, who studies high-risk travel at the University of Quebec in Montreal.

The Titan, the small submersible operated by a Washington state-based company called OceanGate, gives tours primarily in international waters, which means the experimental vessel avoided most U.S. safety rules.